Nippon Connection is back for its 23rd edition, showcasing some of the best contemporary Japanese films alongside some classics. This year it runs from the 6 to 11 June in Frankfurt, Germany.
With everything from Keisuke Kinoshita’s classic ARMY (1944) — by way of recent classics like DRIVE MY CAR (2021) and all the through to the sharply contemporary BABY ASSASSINS 2 BABIES (2023) — there’s plenty to choose from.
Nippon Connection is known for bringing some of the biggest and brightest stars to the fore, and shining an international spotlight on indie gold, via the Nippon Cinema Award, Nippon Docs Award and Nippon Visions Awards. Prior winners include his, Oh Lucy!, Melancholic and Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, so you know this is the good stuff.
With over 100 films on the program this year, here’s a handful that excites this film fan.
Baby Assassins 2 Babies
Unsurprisingly, this is a sequel to Baby Assassins (2021). Director Yugo Sakamoto’s film has action sequences that have been compared to the John Wick series, and people seem to like those, right? Plus, it’s competing for the Nippon Cinema Award! If the film doesn’t appeal, then at least acknowledge the brilliance of the title.
Plan 75
The debut feature of Chie Hayakawa, one that premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and served as Japan’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars. So, no wonder it is turning up on lots of festivals this year. Set in a “future” where there’s a housing and jobs crisis, it sees the government introduce a program encouraging everybody over the age of 75 to choose suicide. Too soon?
Lonely Castle in the Mirror
There’s some great and popular animation from the last few years playing at Nippon Connection in 2023, including encore sessions of Tekkonkinkreet, The Deer King and Poupelle of Chimney Town. I’ve included Keiichi Hara’s film as an example one of the newer animated films on display. Plus, we love a portal in a mirror and a girl with a wolf’s head in the promotional image, don’t we?
December
We’ve been following Anshul Chauhan for a few years now, especially the excellent Kontora (2019) from a few years ago, along with his more recent short film Leo’s Return (2021), which was another superb character study. So, a new feature film from the director is something to get excited about. This one follows the psychological trauma of a person fighting for a reduction of her prison sentence seven years after murdering a classmate.
Mountain Woman
Takeshi Fukunaga’s Ainu Mosir was a great step in Japan’s slow recognition of the Ainu peoples, and got to the heart of the tension between wider recognition of Ainu and broader cultural attitudes to some of the practices. His newest feature follows Toko Miura (Drive My Car, Our Huff and Puff Journey) into the mysteries of Mount Hayachine after she takes the blames for her father’s desperate crime. There she meets a mysterious man. Doesn’t it make you go ‘oooh?’
Thorns of Beauty
Another one that came highly recommended to me when the program was announced was Hideo Jojo’s latest. If you haven’t kept up with Jojo, you’re not alone. Since his debut film in 2003, he’s written and directed over 100 films. Winner of the Japanese Pink Award for erotic films four times in a row (2016-2019), this one concerns a plan to stop an ex from publishing old nude photos — and revenge!
Sayonara Girls
Following the award-winning short Kalanchoe that has been doing the rounds since 2016, this debut feature had its premiere at the 2022 Tokyo International Film Festival. Because it’s not a film festival unless there’s a movie about four high school girls contemplating their future with trepidation in the days before graduation! It’s the law.
Tokyo University Of The Arts: Animation Shorts
More of a collection of picks than a single entity, if you want to know where the next generation of great Japanese animation is coming from, then this is one place to start. At over 130 years old, Tokyo University of the Arts is the oldest national art university in Japan. Following the opening of their Department of Animation in 2008, Assistant Professor Sayaka Omodaka presents the best pieces selected from the last year.
Single8
Many of us were inspired by certain key films from our collective pasts, whether it was to make, write about, or just watch a lot of movies. Director Kazuya Konaka was notably inspired by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) to make his debut Claws in the year he turned 13. Known for directing episodes and cinematic pieces for the Ultraman series, here he returns to his roots and follows a group of kids in 1978 who see Star Wars and want to make movies of their own.
Egoist
There’s only a handful of LGBTQIA+ films tagged in this year’s program and director Daishi Matsunaga’s film is having its German premiere. Based on the autobiographical novel by Makoto Takayama, it follows two young men who start a passionate affair following a workout session — although that relationship is soon put to the test.
Army (1944)
For the retrospective category, it’s hard to go past Keisuke Kinoshita’s ARMY. In fact, the BFI recently picked it in their list of The best Japanese film of every year – from 1925 to now. In that list, critic Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández notes that it was made under the strict eyes of a wartime government, but remains “a milestone of emotion, ambiguity and resistance against the dehumanising representation of jingoism in propaganda films. Of course, Kinoshita paid for his audacity and did not direct another film until after the war.”
The full program, and tickets, are now available on Nippon Connection’s official site.
